Microsoft, please fix your software!

Does anyone at Microsoft care to hire people who can fix security problems, or are they
going to issue makeshift patches day after day? John Dvorak calls on the software giant to
fix its software.

COMMENTARY-- You'd think that after the FBI (news - web sites)
first warned the public about a computer virus, Microsoft would announce
a comprehensive plan to fix what's broken regarding security flaws in
Windows—and especially in Outlook Express. The company can start by
wresting control of the browser architecture from the Web Consortium
and other committees and immediately ceasing to allow fancy functionality
that nobody except a few maniacs actually uses.

In fact, whatever increased functionality one gets from the Web because
of these features can easily be eliminated with few complaints. The same
holds for some of the stupid advanced features of Word and Excel that
are nothing more than Windows dressing. Let's look at a few of the
troublesome subsystems that let a Web page do more than simply present
data to your computer.

First of all, anything obtained online that can actively read from or write to
the hard drive must be permanently eliminated, or its functionality must be
seriously disabled or limited. This flies in the face of e-commerce folks
and other dot-com mavens who hope more intrusive capabilities could be
implemented for market research and other marketing reasons. These
people, few of whom knew what a computer was a decade ago, see
everything in terms of marketing, and they push companies like Microsoft
to pay little if any attention to security.

Microsoft is always asked about this security flaw or that security flaw. The questioners usually end
with "Why do you even have such a feature?" Microsoft spokespeople invariably answer, "It's what
our customers have asked for." You see this comment in a lot of the news coverage of Microsoft
security failings. But which customers is the company referring to? Not me, that's for sure. And
probably not another 99 percent of customers, many of whom can't even figure out how to put page
numbers on a Word document.

Ask yourself, who (besides marketers) really wants an active Web page reading from and writing to
the hard drive without intervention? Are cookies, for example, really that important to most users?
Let's start by getting rid of anything to do with ActiveX, then let's look at the newest capabilities of the
browser and disable anything that interacts with a user's computer, other than the display, with or
without permission. Microsoft controls the browser. Microsoft should put an end to this.

Of course, what is the likelihood of that happening if Microsoft won't fix more apparent problems that
also have no reason to exist? By this, I mean the structure and functionality of the Word macro
language. Virus hunters have been telling Microsoft to get rid of macro capability as implemented, to
no avail. We have yet to see the great killer macro virus that will bring everything down everywhere,
but we've come close. And what good are macros if you can't use them or nobody will execute them?
Both Word and Excel should be recoded from scratch under the scrutiny of security experts.

Then we have Outlook Express. The product has been under fire since its release, and almost every
major virus uses Outlook's open-door security policy to turn individual mailboxes into spam-o-matic
e-mailing machines. This happens over and over—costing the nation and the world billions of
dollars—and nothing is done, which alone calls for the breakup of Microsoft. Have the company
dissociate itself from e-mail programs like this dog.

Everywhere you look, there are problems, one after another. Microsoft's first point-to-point tunneling
protocol was flawed. More recently, the newest version of Windows Media Player can somehow
execute code and create all sorts of damage.

Microsoft apologists will tell you that Unix (news - web sites) has many flaws, too. It's riddled with all
sorts of holes. I'm not going to argue that point, but Unix is a legacy OS, not unlike DOS in its ancient
heritage. And no Unix vendor has the resources of Microsoft. Microsoft is the world's biggest
software company, period. It should act the part.

I haven't even bothered to mention Microsoft IIS, which has more holes than a wheel of Swiss cheese
after a shotgun blast. Does anyone at Redmond care to hire people who can fix these problems, or
are they going to issue makeshift patches day after day?

Gates was right years ago when he said that the market could change instantly and put Microsoft out
of business. All we need is something else! Anything!

Reset your margins, Z. I had this problem last fall and Uncle Bob
had the Word 2000 version. HE was able to print out the document
with the page numbers, while I was not. I reset my margins and got
the page numbers to print.

I will give it a look-see. It is on a G4 running Office 98. I have
2000 on a Windows machine without the problem [with Office; I
still haven't been converted to wondernous of NT]. One thing I
never do is try to figure out MS software [Office]. I really don't like
the new versions. But I have to stay compatible with the staff and
administration and they upgrade with each new version. Hey,
Office 2000 only cost me $30.00 for the liscence.

For my writing for publication, I still prefer Word 5.1. That will stop
since everyone wants submission on a disc or CD and
compatibility raises its ugly head again. ;
Best Wishes,,,,

Gee, Z. I only paid $25.00 for it. [Heh] Of course the disks have
been sitting on my desk for a year now because I no longer have
enough storage to install it. It eats memory like crazy and
my 'chine might be even lower on that than my brain.

I should try a lot of things, Z. This 'chine with 3 gig seemed
enormous when I bought it, but [as you said] Microsoft stuff just
kept getting bigger and bigger. Now, I can't even open the mail on
my main account. I don't have the storage to do it. I've also grown
tired of playing with it, regarding shifting stuff from logical disk
to logical disk, deleting stuff to make more room, etc. One of these
days, I'll reach my limits emotionally, put the important stuff [like
a few resumes] onto diskette, take a sledge hammer to the thing and
get a Linux system working from scratch with NO strings attached to
Gates.